


wish bound in the night

by aspiepatsy (orphan_account)



Category: Dreamcatcher (Korea Band)
Genre: Bone Season AU, Clairvoyance, Dreamscapes, Drug Addiction, F/F, Ghosts, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Possession, Recreational Drug Use, Violence, Work In Progress, aka a project im actually gonna stick with lmao, maybe some smut later we'll see, set prior to the events of book #1 in the bone season series, this sucks but im doing the best i can with 0 motivation and very little time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 17:19:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12916608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/aspiepatsy





	wish bound in the night

**_December, 2050_ **

The city, quite sadly, had fallen into a state of disrepair under martial law. The banners of Scion seemed to encroach upon them from all sides, the floodlights ensuring that the black anchor emblem could be seen even throughout the night. They fancied it as an anchor to hold the world together as the clairvoyants- no, the ‘unnatural’ tried to dismantle the world piece by piece.

When news had first reached them of the Molly riots ( _one of the only real cases of nationwide resistance against the Scion regime_ ), they had dismissed them as someone else’s problem as, unlike Europe, the inherent attitude towards clairvoyants here wasn’t as vile. Amaurotics treated them just as they would anyone else, provided clairvoyants didn’t go around poking in their dreamscapes and it wasn’t uncommon for ‘rotties’ (as some of the more elitist clairvoyants styled the normal people) to study clairvoyants and the aether but leave it to Scion to see this as the clairvoyant’s way of lulling amaurotics into a false sense of security to execute some ‘master plan’, or for them to see the rest of the world as theirs for the taking.

Clairvoyants had been reduced to busking as Scion descended over the city in the new year of 2050, laundering their services out to turn a quick profit and gangs of voyants were quickly established, controlling swathes of territory and subsequently, the spirits that inhabited them. Their little group, while one of the less powerful ones, was right on the fringes of the Scion outposts which meant they should be at more risk but with so many people dying left and right, there were plenty of pissed off drifters and ghosts flitting around so unless the Vigilance Division had a medium or guardian class clairvoyant, they tended to stay away from their streets.

Handong’s fingers tighten around her make-shift cigarette ( _she’d had to improvise with some spare paper after Minji cleaned out her room_ ), and she exhales a string of smoke that almost seems translucent, mingling with the tendrils of fog working their way through the alley. She was never good for these covert outings – you didn’t have to be a genius to spot the haze of white that seemed to hang around her permanently and the sickening scent of white aster wasn’t exactly one that could blend in amidst the even worse ones of blood, ash and oil that seemed to form a cologne for the unnamed beast of chaos that held the city in its grasp but she was no stranger to coming up with a well-crafted excuse to take a walk and filching some pocket change from a few amaurotics as she went.

Very little snow had managed to stay on the streets and Handong can’t remember the last time she saw untouched, freshly fallen snow – the snow here has been worn into slush the colour of a fading yellow bruise, peppered with gravel and dried blood and most of it had melted down into the drains. The lack of a wintery atmosphere doesn’t make it any less cold though, and she envies the amaurotics who get to shut themselves up inside their houses with a nice fireplace. It wasn’t that the safe house didn’t have one, it’s more that if anyone tried to keep it warm, Yoobin, Minji and their little entourage of assorted spirits would have their head off.

Turning down the alleyway just a couple streets before the Scion checkpoint, Handong snuffs out her cigarette and with it, the last of her aster flower. Digging around in her pocket, she manages to find enough for at least two weeks’ worth of white aster ( _considering Minji had also taken half her earnings from that month so she would be discouraged from getting her next dose_ ), and disappears inside the nearest shop with the almost unnoticeable black-market symbol carved on the back of the sign.

It wasn’t as if she was addicted to aster, nor was she the only one in the group who had used it. When they’d first met, Yoobin wasn’t a stranger to purple aster and even now, Siyeon would burn it if she had multiple clients in need of divination. It just so happened that white aster erased memories but if it helped her forget the incident which made her an Unreadable in the first place, what did it matter if she forgot her own name or a certain word every once in a while?

-

The shopkeeper’s aura is almost overwhelming and for a moment, Handong thinks she must belong to a very high order of clairvoyant but upon closer inspection, she realises it’s just small ripple of green lines – the mark of a medium. There’s no one else in the shop, just several creepy mannequins standing sentry in the corner with vials of blood hanging from their necks and holding airtight boxes in their delicately carved hands and Handong certainly isn’t eager to guess what’s inside them.

When she asks for aster, the shopkeeper takes a minute and pretends to look around for it, probably thinking of a way to coax more money than is needed from Handong, and as she does so, Handong studies her aura, pushing at it a little.

Her aura is substantially calmer than Siyeon’s and reminds her of Boras in the way it ripples in the air with every small movement. For a moment, Handong has to keep herself from laughing as she remembers the first time the others saw her own aura. They nearly tripped over themselves, thinking she was a Sybil, or maybe even an oracle, but after one of Yoobin’s spirits decided he didn’t quite like this outsider, they realised very quickly that she was in fact, an Unreadable.

Considering the sheer rarity of her order, Minji and Yoohyeon had been insistent on uncovering what exactly had corrupted her dreamscape so drastically, Yoohyeon out of sheer curiosity more than anything else, but truthfully, Handong had spent so long doped up on white aster that she couldn’t remember the exact details herself and perhaps it was better off that way.

Handong snaps back to reality as the shopkeeper pushes the paper bag of petals into her hand in exchange for all the money she had, and Handong wastes no time getting out of there, feeling the unnatural chill spreading into the storefront that heralded the presence of an ethereal being ( _the atmospheric changes were all Handong had to go on since, unlike the others, she was spirit-blind_ ). Leave it to a medium to keep a ghost on hand.

*

The safe house, and its inhabitants, had become a second home and family to Handong, despite their varied opinions of her shortcomings. They weren’t developed enough to be classified as a gang, and Minji barely held any sway within the voyant hierarchy so calling her a mime-queen was laughable.

Still, for a group of buskers, they managed to hold themselves together surprisingly well. They all came from their own little picture-perfect backgrounds and in the case of Gahyeon, she seemed to hang on the edge of depravity and affluence having amaurotic parents who in the past, had nurtured her gifts, yet they had fallen prey to the venomous propaganda pushed by the Scion government as they tried to undermine clairvoyants at every turn.

Tucking the paper bag into her jacket, Handong slips past the spool of ghosts by the front door and curses her lack of coloboma once more since she can only sense the vague outline of their forms. Minji had insisted on settling near several haunts so they would always have a supply of spirits ready to use and Yoobin didn’t have to suffer possession at the hands of the same spirit every day.

Handong can’t help but bury her face in her hands as she closes the door behind her, choking on the sickly-sweet scent of all the flowers Bora kept around the place, in the windowsills, on the tables, on top of the bookshelves, she even had a shelf of notebooks filled with pressed flower heads in her room should her divination call for it. It always took some getting used to for her, she could never understand how Minji was completely unfazed by it.

Suppressing a cough, she slunk past the ring of ratty, decrepit couches where Yoohyeon lay sleeping, scraps of paper scattered on the coffee table. Some of them are intelligible and concise but all of them are in a variety of languages – English, Japanese, French, Latin – and Handong wonders how on Earth she manages to stay sane with so many dead voices clouding her thoughts when someone like Bora can barely manage a single divination an hour. Desperate not to wake her ( _both because she knows Yoohyeon needs the rest and she doesn’t want to get caught_ ), Handong creeps along the rickety wooden floor, all the way past the heavy metal stove that never seemed to work, and up the stairs.

As she steals through the dimly lit hallway to her own room, she can hear music blaring from Yoobin’s room and knows better than to make any noise that might disrupt the gurgling gramophone – Yoobin needed it to concentrate, or rather, her resident ghost needed it to concentrate, and the last time he was disturbed, he refused to work, robbing them of most of their income. The creations of the dead, whether it be art, music, writing, or even photography, was worth far more if it was created posthumously by the spirit themselves with the aid of an automatiste.

Handong closes the door behind her with a gentle click, the skin on her hands starting to tighten and ache from the sudden change in temperature. Chewing at the inside of her cheek, she damn near flings the bag of aster flowers under her pillow like she was carrying a hot coal. She knows she’ll have to move it later since that’s usually the first place Minji checks, but for now, she’s just glad she managed to get in and out without too much bother although she knows she has to make this dose last.

As if sensing her desperation, the thick scar down the back of her shoulder blade starts to sting, the skin around it throbs in an irregular rhythm, like the poltergeist who caused it so long ago has crept under her skin and is laughing at what she’s become in the wake of the incident. Shrugging off her jacket, Handong clenches her eyes shut against the waves of pain.

“ _It’s not real, it’s not real_.” She mutters to herself, eyes snapping back open and she stares down at her hands, skin as white as the petals which both damn her and keep her sane all at once.

She is home, but still hiding.


End file.
